Tom Steyer skewers oil industry with new Tax Day ad (VIDEO)

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer — who owes some of his fortune to the petroleum industry — keeps ramping up his “grassroots” campaign for an oil severance tax — with the latest being this Tax Day beatdown of the oil industry, courtesy of the fertile/twisted minds at SF digital firm Portal A, who we profiled here.

“On Tax Day, when millions of Californians go to the post office to pay their taxes, there is one group of people who aren’t paying and that’s the oil companies,” said Steyer adviser Chris Lehane.

To be specific, they’re not paying oil severance taxes in California, which is the only major oil producing state not to demand them.

Relax. This is the long game approach. Steyer is aiming a ballot measure at 2016 — a more favorable electorate for such things — should it come to that. And right now they’re polling Californians to see how they would like the revenue from any such tax to come back to them. In the form of a direct rebate? A tax cut for those earning less than $100,000?

Crafting a measure that would put money directly back in the hands of taxpayers is aimed at taking away the biggest club the oil companies have, which is to say that if a tax is imposed, gas prices would go up.

But until 2016, expect more “grassroots” outreach and fun videos.

Update:

Sabrina Lockhart of Californians Against Higher Oil Taxes responds:
“In 2012 alone, California’s oil and gas industry paid $21.5 billion in state and local taxes and employed hundreds of thousands of Californians,” California companies already pay a per barrel tax on oil while it is in the ground. California’s income, sales and gas taxes are the highest in the nation. Other major oil producing states do not have these same tax burdens. Alaska has no personal income tax or sales tax. Texas does not have corporate or personal income taxes.
“If hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer cares so much about the middle class, he should release his own tax returns so that Californians know he’s paying his fair shake.”

And really, we can’t talk about Portal A — especially on the first night of a Giants-Dodgers series in San Francisco, without a nod to this….if only because it’s good to see Brian Wilson in a Giants uniform again: